Thursday, June 16, 2011

Organs of people killed by euthanasia being 'harvested for transplant surgery in Belgium'?

" ... a high proportion of deaths classified as euthanasia in Belgium have involved patients who have not requested their lives to be ended by a doctor?"

A quarter of all lung transplants in Belgium are from people killed by lethal injection

From the Daily Mail:

The organs of people killed by euthanasia in Belgium are being harvested for transplant surgery, a report revealed yesterday.

A quarter of all lung transplants in Belgium are from people killed by lethal injection.

The study, led by Dirk van Raemdonck a surgeon from Leuven, found doctors preferred lungs taken from those who die through euthanasia as they are in a far superior condition to those from people killed in accidents.

The paper showed about 23.5 per cent of lung transplant donors and 2.8 per cent of heart transplant donors are killed by euthanasia.

Mr Van Raemdonck insisted doctors were acting within Belgian guidelines on euthanasia, which was legalised in 2002.

All of the donors had given their consent.

The report showed ‘donors were admitted to hospital a few hours before the planned euthanasia procedure’.

They were given the lethal injection, died and then used for organ retrieval.